Tag: philosophy

The Trump DICTATORSHIP. – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness. – & – INCOMPETENCE1, CCXX – Republicans Help Rich Steal Over $70 Trillion From The Working Class

~ tomdolen

*** “The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loves to paint..but is conceived and ordered..in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.” [ C. S. Lewis ]

This post presents excerpts from “It’s Worse Than You Think for The Middle Class”. [ Thom Hartmann; The Progressive Populist; September, 2026 ]:

13] “This is what Republicans do, and have been doing since Nixon’s era; move wealth from working class people into the money bins of the morbidly rich. The Rand corporation says it is now over $70 trillion that the rich have stolen from the working class.”

***. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.” [ Wendell Phillips ]

1]. “As a result of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society “socialist” programs, about two-thirds of American families were in the middle class with a single paycheck by 1973 as reported by The New York Times; today that number could be as low as a third of us, depending on your definitions.”

2]. “Pew..uses the definition of middle class as people falling in the middle of the bell-curve of income distribution. By that definition, Pew says 61% of Americans lived in middle-income households in 1971 and by 2023 that had declined to 5l% of us.. This skewing of statistics is driven in large part by a few thousand American families, particularly the morbidly rich billionaire class.”

3]. “But does being “in the middle of the income distribution curve” mean that people in the “middle’ today. – even if it’s a smaller percentage of Americans. – enjoy the same “middle class” lifestyle and opportunities as they did at the beginning of the Reagan Revolution?”

4] “This is where it gets sticky. If, instead of defining the middle class as those people in the middle of the income distribution you defined it by what that income buys, an entirely different picture emerges.”

***. “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, if which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” [. Adam Smith. – Yes!!! – THAT. Adam Smith ]

5] “..former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in his 1991 book. “The Work of Nations”: “America has been the first nation in history in which the majority of its citizens considered themselves middle class… For three decades after World War II, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen.” [NOTE: for YOU – THE question now must be: What Happened? The filthy rich did NOT want this sharing of America’s wealth to continue. – so they ended it]

6] “Two years ago, The Washington Post surveyed Americans about what the middle class meant to them and who they thought was in it. The paper found broad agreement among the majority of Americans who say you’re only in the middle class if you have: -A secure job [93%]. -The ability to save for the future [91%]. -The ability to afford a $1,000 emergency [90%]. -The ability to pay all bills on time without worry [90%]. – Comprehensive health insurance [89%] -The ability to retire securely [87%]. -A job with paid sick leave [73%]. -The time and money for vacations [67%]. -Own your own home [60%]. “

7]. “By that definition, the Post found: “Just over a third of Americans met all six..markers of a middle-class lifestyle. While about 9 in 10 Americans had health insurance, only three-quarters had health insurance and a steady job. With each added measure of financial security, more Americans slipped away from the middle-class ideal.”

8] “Using the ..[Federal Reserve Bank}… Survey of Consumer Finances, The Post’s authors doubled down on their assertion that the number of Americans today in the middle class is even lower than the 41% to 47% stat that I’ve been citing: “Since 2017, the earliest year of comparable data, BETWEEN 32 and 40 percent of Americans met all six measures…”

***. “We are no longer the democracy we once were. We have become a plutocracy.. In 2011, AdAge..declared the era of mass affluence over in America.. “Simply put, a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending.” [ Double Pulitzer Prize winners Donald Barlett & James Steele: “The Betrayal of The American Dream” ]

9]. “The Brookings Institution also talks about various definitions of the middle class, one of them arguing it encompasses: – stable employment. -home ownership. -retirement savings. -ability to weather emergencies -intergenerational mobility. Depending on the selected definition and using the Fed’s numbers, Brookings calculates that between 23% and 48% of households would count as being in the middle class today.”

10]. “..the Fed poits out that just defining the middle class by a family’s position within the income distribution curve can be confusing and even deceptive. Their Survey of Consumer finances and wealth surveys show that a family can earn a “middle income” but still have: -no emergency savings. -no retirement savings -little or no home equity. -heavy debt. Which is probably why Pew’s earlier work using Federal Reserve data showed that median middle-income family wealth fell dramatically after the Bush Crash of 2008 and has remained far below what previous generations accumulated ever since.” [NOTE: is it just a coincidence that tragedies that have befallen American seem to happen during Republican presidencies?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!]

11] “…the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OCED] defines the middle class much as I do, by economic resilience, asking whether families can: -withstand financial shocks. -accumulate wealth. -afford housing. -educate their children. – retire securely. Their conclusion was straightforward: many households traditionally labeled ‘middle income”. no longer enjoy the security once associated with being in the American middle class…..also the conclusion of 71% of Americans….”

12] “…simply consider Reagan’s war on unions, his slashing top income tax rates for corporations and the morbidly rich, and the Republican party’s 45-year all-out attack on programs that support the bottom half of Americans. These GOP policies have ripped the guts out of average American families’ ability to have. – even with two full-time paychecks. – the lifestyle that the majority of Americans enjoyed with a single paycheck in 1981 when Reagan was sworn into office.”

***. “…arguably, the most important economic trend in the United States over the past couple of generations has been the ever-more-distinct sorting of Americans into winners and losers, and the slow hollowing of the middle class.” [ Don Peck, in Rick Wartzman: “the End of Loyalty” ]

*** [NOTE: think in terms of THEFT; America, because of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great society, from 1947 – 73. – HAD the envy of the world. – a society in which about two-thirds of american families were considered “middle class”. with a SINGLE paycheck. In 2026. – somewhere between 30-50% of Americans are NOW considered “middle class’. – and. – many/most of them do it with TWO paychecks. THIS is the context for the Rand corporation saying America’s rich have stolen over $70 trillion from the American working class.]

***. “You know, the only trouble with capitalism is capitalists. they’re too damn greedy.”

[Herbert Hoover; Republican; 31st U.S. President]

The Trump DICTATORSHIP – Stupidity, Cruelty, Corruption, Craziness, CXII – Moral Clarity in Minnesota on MLK Day

~ tomdolen


***. “I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man, who having stepped outside rational morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.” [ C. S. Lewis ]

this post presents excerpts from. “On this MLK Day, a letter from Minnesota” [Haley Taylor Schlitz; Minnesota Star Tribune; 1/19/26 ]: “To Dr. King and my fellow Minnesotans..” :

3]. “We are encouraged to treat what is happening here as a local disturbance. A Minnesota problem. A protest problem. Something to be managed. But what is happening here is not simply “tension.” It is an argument about the character of public power. When a president threatens a state with “reckoning and retribution,” he is not using the language of neutral law. he is using the language of punishment. A government can enforce laws without promising vengeance. When it promises vengeance, it tells you what it believes the law is for.””

5] ‘..power does not only suppress through force. It also suppresses through framing. It trains the public to treat discomfort as disorder, and disorder as the real threat. It persuades decent people that their primary civic duty is to keep things calm, even if the calm is purchased with someone else’s fear.”

8] “You insisted on the interrelatedness of communities, and you rejected the narrow “outside agitator” idea. You insisted that no one in this country should be treated as an outsider anywhere within it….But this is not a Minnesota-only problem. It is a national test with a Minnesota address.”

11] “So what does moral clarity look like in Minnesota this MLK Day? It looks like refusing to confuse quiet with peace, and refusing to treat fear as normal. It looks like insisting that investigations be credible, independent and transparent enough to earn public trust, not simply being declared trustworthy by authority. It looks like leaders who speak with discipline and courage, and citizens who do not outsource their conscience.”

*** “Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life.”
[ Cunningham Geikie ]

1] “This year, MLK Day arrives with masked federal agents fanning out across theTwin Cities and beyond, with unmarked vehicles and street-level operations reshaping daily life. and with a growing chill…”

2]. “Dr. King, we are not living in your era, but we are facing a familiar question: “Is ‘order” being used to protect the public, ot to protect power from accountability?”

4] “whatever your politics, you can feel the difference between a justice system that invites public trust and a justice system that treats the public concern as something to be contained.”

6] “Minnesota is drowning in effects-talk. We are being pulled into arguments about tone, about disruption, about whether grief is being expressed the “right” way. You can hear it…..You can see it…..And you can feel it…..what it means to live in a state where daily life is being deliberately reshaped by fear.”

7] “But the cause is what keeps demanding attention. The integrity of an investigation….The fear many communities feel….and when citizens and lawful residents begin to move through public life as if visibility itself is risk.”

9] “If a president can promise retribution against a state for its politics, that is not just rhetoric. it is a message to every other state. if federal institutions can be pressured into secrecy or political targeting, and the public is told to accept silence as a strategy, that is not just an internal dispute. It is an instruction about what accountability will look like from here forward.”

10] “If the new dream is a nightmare, it is not because people are speaking out. It is because trhe public is being trained to accept intimidation as governance, and to accept silence as legitimacy.”

***. “The Aggregate happiness of the society, which is best promoted by the practice of virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government.” [ George Washington; 11/1/1790 ]